Fellini's Roma

R

Released Mar 14, 1972

2 hr. 8 min.

Drama

List

63%

19 Reviews

Tomatometer

83%

5,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

As a young man, Fellini (Peter Gonzales) leaves his small Italian town to go to the big city of Rome, live in a boarding house and cavort with the natives in the 1930s and '40s. In an alternating storyline, the older Fellini (Federico Fellini) goes back to make a movie about Rome, filming things like traffic jams at the Colosseum and the subway system, which hides underground crypts. By inter-cutting this footage, Fellini the director draws comparisons to the old Rome and the new.

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Ð¡onstant R

must see, masterwork !

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/21/24

Full Review

william k

A very personal, even autobiographical, always loving portrayal of the city wildly mixes documentary and fictional elements in a seemingly chaotic order, but thoroughly entertaining and amusing.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Part rambling travelogue, part sense-memory articulation, the experimental Roma is never not oneiric, even in its most documentary moments. Nostalgia ever collides with the grotesque in this overtly indulgent circus of art, architecture, food, sex, fashion and religion. The hand behind it all is ever present, ever manipulating this reconstruction of realities. Fewer movies land as personally and keep viewers guessing to this degree.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Felini's most personal work, Roma finds the filmmaker making good use of his technical and poetic skills to develop a love tribute to his city.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/19/23

Full Review

David A

There isn't really a story... this is more like a glimpse into a great artist's notebook, to see what he's thinking about, what he's remembering, what he's dreaming. "Lesser" Fellini is still the best filmmaking you'll ever see.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/21/20

Full Review

Michael A

The most ordered chaos I have ever seen

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/18/20

Full Review

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Federico Fellini

Director

Peter Gonzales Falcon

Fellini, Age 18

Stefano Mayore

Fellini as a Child

Pia De Doses

Princess Domitilla

Fiona Florence

Young Prostitute

Marne Maitland

Underground Guide

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Pauline Kael

New Yorker

This ringmaster feels no need to relate to the circus people. Fellini is an unparalleled extrovert, even for a profession rich in extroversion; he is so extroverted he has ‘abandoned interest in characters and is interested only in his own projections.

Sep 21, 2023

Full Review

David Denby

The Atlantic

[Fellini] has totally liberated his obsessions from the discipline of telling a story or developing a character or even maintaining a comprehensible point of view.

Jun 21, 2022

Full Review

Steve Erickson

RogerEbert.com

Though "Roma" has the dreamlike flow of "8 1/2" and most late Fellini films, it works here in a way that often didn't for the director.

Dec 27, 2018

Full Review

Chris Shields

Screen Slate

A dizzying assault of radically stylized, pure cinema.

Jan 14, 2020

Full Review

Jesús Fernández Santos

El Pais (Spain)

Fellini has constructed a fantastical documentary, in which fantasy and reality are confused. [Full Review in Spanish]

Jul 17, 2019

Full Review

Nathanael Hood

Audiences Everywhere

But it is a film worth seeing, if only to get the opportunity to see one of the world's greatest cities through the eyes of one of the world's greatest artists.

Rated: B-

Dec 27, 2018

Full Review

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Synopsis

As a young man, Fellini (Peter Gonzales) leaves his small Italian town to go to the big city of Rome, live in a boarding house and cavort with the natives in the 1930s and '40s. In an alternating storyline, the older Fellini (Federico Fellini) goes back to make a movie about Rome, filming things like traffic jams at the Colosseum and the subway system, which hides underground crypts. By inter-cutting this footage, Fellini the director draws comparisons to the old Rome and the new.

Director: Federico Fellini
Screenwriter: Federico Fellini, Bernardino Zapponi
Distributor: United Artists
Production Co: Les Productions Artistes Associés
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
Original Language: Italian
Release Date (Theaters): Mar 14, 1972, Original
Release Date (DVD): Apr 10, 2001
Sound Mix: Mono
Aspect Ratio: 35mm